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al Reserve Bank.47 That the world was being subject to a progressively tightening squeeze
on credit just because there happened to be too much gold on one side of the vault and not
enough on the other provoked Lord d Abernon, Britain s ambassador to Germany after the
war and now an elder statesmen-economist, to exclaim,  This depression is the stupidest and
most gratuitous in history.
As the French hoard kept piling up during the summer and fall of 1930 and with it ten-
sions between Britain and France the French went through the motions of proposing remed-
ies. The return of French gold policy to the forefront of economic debate was too much for
Norman. He happy to deal with the Americans, but having had his fingers burned by his ex-
perience with Moreau in 1927, he absolutely refused to have anything to do with French offi-
cialdom.
Instead, he wisely left it up to the British Treasury to try to negotiate with their counterparts
in the Ministry of Finance. These conversations led nowhere. Indeed, they brought out the
worst in the characters of both countries. The British insisted upon patronizing lectures on the
primitive nature and deficiencies of the French banking system, without any sense that they
themselves would have found such advice from abroad intrusive and insulting.
It soon became clear that France was motivated not so much by economic arguments but
by strategic calculations. French officials tried to use their financial muscle to extract political
concessions money to them not being its own reward. Even the French Military High Com-
mand became involved. General Réquin, a senior adviser to Minister of Defense André Ma-
ginot, wrote to General Weygand, chief of the General Staff, urging that France  lean on Eng-
land while the pound is at our mercy. . . . We can make her understand . . . that if she wants
our help as a lender, other questions must first be settled.
In September 1930, it was suddenly announced that Moreau was resigning. This had
been rumored in Paris for months, but it still came as a great shock in British banking circles.
Initially the talk was that he was being forced out by British pressure and that his departure
might foreshadow a change in French policy.
In fact, having presided over the recovery of the franc, he had just been decorated as
Grand Officier de la Légion d Honneur and decided himself that it would be a good time to go.
He was simply following the age-old practice in France whereby senior civil servants, unusu-
ally poorly paid by international standards, move to the private sector to build up a nest egg.
He had accepted the position of vice president of the Banque de Paris et Pays-Bas, the most
prominent of the private banques d affaires, a distinctively French type of banking house that
combined security underwriting with direct investments in industry. Indeed, he had already
moved out of the official apartment assigned to him as governor, which despite its
 sumptuous trimmings was lit by kerosene lamps, had especially  antiquated heating, and
smelled of  a miser s snuggery, into a magnificent hôtel particulier, a large town house on
the Rue de Constantine opposite Les Invalides.
He was succeeded by his deputy, Clément Moret, like Moreau a graduate in law, who had
then gone on to Sciences Po, and also on to the Ministry of Finance Moret, however, was
not part of the elite Inspectorat des Finances. Instead, the self-effacing Moret had spent
twenty-five years clambering up the Ministry of Finance hierarchy. Plucked from obscurity by
Poincaré, who described him as  abnormally honest, Moret had become a director general
within the ministry and in 1928 had been assigned to the Banque as deputy governor.
He was of a different generation at the age of forty-five the youngest man to be appoin-
ted governor. And in contrast to Moreau, who had been blunt to the point of rudeness, Moret
was courteous and thoughtful. But though there was a change in style at the Banque, there
was to be no change in the substance of policy. Indeed, Moret thought of himself, even more
than had Moreau, as a civil servant and the Banque de France as essentially an arm of the
state. He did propose that if the goal was to redirect gold reserves from France to Britain, the
British government should borrow directly in France. Of course, lacking any assurance that
the pound would remain stable, such a loan would have to be denominated in francs. For Nor-
man, who thought that it was contrary to the  prestige of London even to appear to  ask fa-
vors from the French, this would have been the ultimate humiliation. And so, as a combina-
tion of British pride and heavy-handedness locked horns with French selfishness and arrog-
ance, the French gold mountain kept growing.
Norman instead latched onto a grandiose plan that, it was claimed, would provide a  blood
transfusion to cure the Depression. An international bank, a sort of forerunner of the World
Bank, was to be set up and headquartered in a neutral country, Switzerland or the Nether-
lands, with capital of $250 million. It would be able to borrow another $750 million primarily in
gold-rich France and America, which would be channeled to governments and businesses
around the world in need of capital. Norman rolled it out at the February 1931 monthly meet-
ing in Basel of the BIS, which had become a sort of club for central bankers. They would gath-
er there on a Sunday night, have an informal and private dinner together, and spend the next
day in meetings. Even before the wining and dining was over for the monthly meetings at
Basel would become a byword for good food it was clear that the plan would go nowhere.
Neither the French nor the Americans were willing to hand over large amounts of money to an
internationally run organization likely to be dominated by Englishmen.
The following month Norman sailed for the United States, which he had not visited since
the summer of 1929. It was obvious that in the intervening two years the American press had
greatly missed him. From the very start, following the suddenly announced mission of what
the New York Times called  England s elusive master banker and  man of mystery, vaguely
hinting that some great initiative to solve the world Depression was in the offing, they would
not leave Norman alone. From his departure aboard the Berengaria on March 21, he was fol-
lowed everywhere on his  secret mission and his movements his meetings at the New York
Fed, attended by even the secretary of state, Henry Stimson; his trip to Washington; his visit
to the White House; lunch with Secretary of the Treasury Mellon were all examined in
minute detail. He put on a wonderful performance, hamming it up for the crowd of reporters
that pursued him. Looking more like  an orchestra leader than a banker of such eminence,
he wished them  better luck next time when they tried to extract the purpose of his visit.
When they begged him for some tidbit of insight into the world financial situation, he teased
them by gravely announcing that he thought the recent departure of King Alfonso of Spain in-
to exile would have no effect on international finance. But for all the frenetic schedule of meet- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]